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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. By Doris Kearns Goodwin. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. xx, 916 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-684-82490-6.)
The secret of Abraham Lincoln's success in maintaining Northern support for his Civil War policies lay in his ability to time his actions so as to alienate the fewest number yet move his plans forward. In the process he was able to balance the conservative, moderate, and radical factions of his cabinet to assure their cooperation despite their contentiousness. That is Doris Kearns Goodwin's thesis as she analyzes the president and his team of cabinet secretaries. Her four-way biography of Lincoln and his rivals for the 1860 presidential nomination is a superlative account of Lincoln's political genius. Masterfully bringing together the political, military, and social events of the war, Goodwin provides a truly engaging narrative.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author traces...